Did layoffs affect Twitter content moderation? Musk's thumbs-up for top official
“Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact,” Twitter's Head of Safety & Integrity, Yoel Roth, said in a thread of tweets.
With Elon-Musk-owned Twitter sacking about 50 per cent of its 7,500-strong staff on Friday, the social media giant's head of Trust and Safety said early Saturday that the reduction in workforce affected approximately 15 per cent of the unit. “Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact,” Twitter's Head of Safety & Integrity, Yoel Roth, said in a thread of tweets.
"While we said goodbye to incredibly talented friends and colleagues yesterday, our core moderation capabilities remain in place," he asserted. “Last week, for security reasons, we restricted access to our internal tools for some users, including some members of my team. Most of the 2,000+ content moderators working on front-line review were not impacted, and access will be fully restored in the coming days."
Sharing a graph of the volume of tweets reviewed and actioned daily for October, he further pointed out that over 80 per cent of the company's incoming content was by the access change, adding the “daily volume of moderation actions we take stayed steady through this period.” “I’ll continue to share updates about our Trust & Safety work as things evolve in the days to come. Our team's mission of enforcing our policies and protecting the conversations happening on Twitter remains unchanged,” Roth tweeted.
In a message to recruiters, Roth said that his direct messages were open and he had recommendations for incredibly smart and compassionate talent.
Elon Musk retweeted Roth's thread and gave a thumbs-up, “Excellent summary of Twitter’s Trust & Safety from the head of the team.”
Reacting to the layoffs at his company, Musk had said there was no choice when the social media giant was losing $ 4 million per day. Musk has faced widespread criticism of how layoffs were carried out at Twitter.
The world's richest person has also been facing flak over a Twitter employee sleeping on the office floor to meet tight deadlines. In recent years, ex-employees at Tesla and SpaceX, who have been anonymous, highlighted the toxic work culture at their respective companies including Elon Musk creating unrealistic targets without any real planning.
